Wish Upon A Star
by Idiot Jed1
Summary: Follow-up to my series They Told It Wrong. Long after Angel returns to LA.


Title: Wish Upon A Star

Author: Idiot Jed

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Summary: Follow-up to my series "They Told It Wrong."  It would help to read those first.  This is slightly AU. 

The dark room was filled with the sound of labored breathing and the sickly, antiseptic smell of medicine.  The presence of Death was overwhelming; he had come knocking for my Aunt Cordy, but like every challenge she ever faced in her unbelievable life, she met it with a bitingly sarcastic wit and a beautifully made-up face.  There were only two of us left in the room.  Mom was looking after my own kids in the living room--I could hear the singing voices of perpetually happy Disney characters, in an odd harmony with Uncle Lorne's voice.  Aunt Faith and her daughter had relocated to the Ohio hellmouth after a horde of T'Vikal demons had overpowered my Dad and Uncle Wes; after so long at odds, they went down together as brothers in arms.  Theirs was a joint funeral, and even as I felt like the world was going to end--how could it go on without a man like my Dad?--Aunt Faith and my mom were crying and laughing and kissing the people from all over the world that had come to mourn them.  My cousin Connor said his good-byes earlier today and returned to the other side of town to his wife at home; even after all this time, he loved Cordy with an intensity unswayable by the intellectual knowledge that, for the longest time, it wasn't her he loved.  But he would be patrolling later, trailing Uncle Angel and watching his back.  Underneath all the anger and pain, they really did love each other, and they could still bond over the destruction of a vampire nest.

At the present, however, Uncle Angel sat in his customary darkness in the corner of Aunty Cordy's bedroom.  He was not brooding, however.  I had never actually seen him brood--he told me he had turned over a new leaf in hell.  Many years after the scary and exciting night I had been woken up by the yells and laughter his return had elicited, I found out the entire story.  During the final battle in Sunnydale, he had been sucked into the hellmouth and was down there for centuries, battling unimaginable creatures.  But he kept at it, praying to return home, hoping that this perhaps was the trial alluded to in the scrolls, waiting for the reward he was half afraid might actually come.  And just like that he was outside my front door, seeing Cordelia again after so long.  But the Powers never did treat their champions well.  My new uncle, and oh how I grew to love him, was still a vampire and still cursed.  But he never again brooded.

Tonight he was laughing with Aunt Cordy over memories long before my time, of a nightclub named the Bronze and magic Halloween costumes.  With an attention span shortened by ignorance and irrelevance, I was distracted by the wall of pictures on the far side of the room.  An impossibly young Cordy with a gorgeous, dark-haired clown, playing on a pier with two redheads.  Aunt Cordy, Uncle Wes, and Uncle Angel not long after they first moved to LA and formed the detective agency.  Angel handing Cordy a baby Connor.  Mom and Dad's wedding.  Thousands of pictures of my cousins and I growing up.  Connor's wedding to Anne.  (She was so much older than him, and it took a long time for him to convince her that she could date him even though he had spent several nights as one of her shelter boys after Angel disappeared).  My wedding, my babies.  Another one of Uncle Wes in a tuxedo.  Lorne belting his heart out.  A picture of Lilah--without the scarf I had always seen her in.  Aunt Cordy said it reminded her of her past (I never did hear the story behind that one).  Aunt Faith and Uncle Wes kissing like teenagers at the park.  So many pictures, such a wonderful life.  I couldn't believe it.  I couldn't imagine my life without her.

"Alonna?"  Uncle Angel's voice startled me.  I noticed Aunt Cordy had stopped talking.  Her eyes had closed and her breathing was shallow.  It was almost time.  I hurried to the bedside and gripped her hand like I had as a child, afraid of the dark before I even knew there were real monsters. She opened her eyes and smiled at me.  She tilted her head slightly, back to the man who had loved her with an unbeating heart.  

"Sorry," she whispered.

"Oh darling, why?  There's nothing to be sorry for."

"I told you I'd be there until the end.  I promised.  But I will be there waiting for you."

Angel leaned forward and kissed her forehead, her eyelids.  "My beautiful Seer."

I think I'll always remember her dying moment, the death rattle in her lungs as she left our world again and at last.  Uncle Angel starting crying, gasping so hard I became frightened.  He looked at me and his eyes… they were shining.  There weren't tears, but actual light. 

"Uncle Angel?  Uncle Angel!"

He reached out for my hand, effectively calming me.  

"What just happened?"

"I've shanshued.  Her last heartbeat was my first."

I went out to the living room, still in shock, still crying.  Aunt Fred and Uncle Lorne looked up at me and then sadly at each other.  He put an arm around her and she sighed.  Uncle Angel needed a few more minutes in there, but I couldn't see my Aunt Cordy like that.  The shell of her body was too much contrast to the liveliest person I have ever known.

My kids barely noticed my return.  They were once again singing to the Disney movie.  I reached for the remote and pressed Stop.

"HEY!  Mom!"

I sat down and pulled my kids into my arms.  "That movie is all wrong, you know.  They told it wrong.  But I know what really happened."

And I told them how Pinnochio became a real boy.

A/N:  This is not the story I sat down to write.  I would've liked it to have a similar optimistic feeling as the related stories, but this is what came out.  Sorry if it depressed anyone.


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